6 Ways early career researchers can identify trending topics in their field of study
To succeed in getting your manuscript accepted by a high-impact-factor journal, you will need to convince the journal’s editor that what you are offering is not only original, that is based on original research, but also extends the frontiers of research on the topic that the journal is devoted to. And if not extending the frontiers, your manuscript at least fills a clear gap in research in that field.
But how do you spot such gaps? How do you know what the cutting-edge topics are in your field of research? This task can appear daunting even to seasoned researchers, let alone young researchers. However, seasoned researchers are better networked, which makes the task a bit easier for them. This article will be particularly helpful to early-career researchers in identifying trending topics for their doctoral or post-doctoral work. Here is how you go about the task.
Remain up to date in your field
More than anything else, knowing areas in your field that are being actively pursued by researchers is a reliable way to find fruitful topics for your research. And that is possible only if you make it a point to skim through every issue – as soon as possible after it is published – of at least a couple of leading journals in your field. Not every issue will offer you something useful, but reading at least the titles of papers in each issue is something you must do as a matter of routine.
It is becoming more and more common for journals not to wait until they have enough papers to make up one issue – journals are no longer shackled by the chains of the print medium – but to publish each article on the journal’s website as and when it is ready for publication. And that means you need to look up the websites of a couple of journals in your field at least once a week.
Within journals, do not limit your reading to research papers
Most journals offer their readers not only full-length research papers based on original research but also other reading matter in the form of editorials, commentaries and viewpoints, reports of conferences, and so on. These sections of journals may offer you good leads because they go beyond specific laboratory or field experiments by commenting on the results of multiple papers and often speculate on possibilities. Such speculations take you into unchartered waters, which is exactly where you encounter gaps in knowledge.
Set up to ‘alerts’
Although it is a good practice to focus on a couple of journals, cutting-edge research is often published in multidisciplinary journals to reach a wider audience. It is also possible that real ground-breaking work, because it challenges established dogmas, is often published in relatively minor journals. For example, Gregor Mendel’s ground-breaking work on inheritance of characters was published in the Proceedings of the Brno Society for the Study of Natural Science, and it is doubtful whether any leading journal of the day would have published Mendel’s contributions because his “method of planning experiments and evaluating the results of hybridization was new, unusual, and surprising for that era”.1
However, you must have some means of keeping tabs on such papers in your field—and that is possible by setting up ‘Google Alerts’. To set up an alert, you specify the keywords, and whenever any paper matching those keywords is published, you receive an intimation through email.
Participate in conferences, seminars, workshops, etc.
As mentioned earlier, seasoned researchers have more extensive networks that keep them informed. It is by attending conferences, symposia, etc. that you get to know not only the current areas of active interest – many preliminary results are presented at conferences first, before formal publication in a journal – but also your peers working in that area, and chance conversations at such events can be a source of useful ideas.
Read relevant trade journals and visit relevant exhibitions
Whereas eventually you will want to publish your research in peer-reviewed academic journals, practical experience is always useful in many domains of work, because it is only in the field that you can see at first-hand the application of research—and also learn of its shortcomings, which you can then think of overcoming through your work.
Leaving your laboratory and meeting practitioners widens your horizons and offers you a different perspective, and attending trade exhibitions gives you the opportunity to meet those who are implementing practical applications of research in your field. Trade journals and exhibitions also highlight latest devices, instruments, etc., which can extend the reach of research. For instance, advances in nanotechnology have led to striking discoveries not only in engineering but also in biology and medicine.
Explore opportunities for interdisciplinary research
Cross-fertilization of ideas has often led to spectacular advances in fields far away from the one in which a given idea or topic was first explored. For example, the self-cleaning properties of the lotus leaf paved the way for self-cleaning surface paints, and ultramicroscopic observations on the gecko’s foot led to a patented adhesive. These and similar stories are captured by Peter Forbes (2006) in his book The Gecko’s Foot: how scientists are taking a leaf from nature’s book.2
Given the massive output of research – thousands of journals and hundreds of thousands of researchers – you may wonder how you will ever find a new, worthwhile, and feasible topic for research. However, keep your eyes and ears open, and you will find something to chew on. Here’s wishing you good luck!
References
1. Vyskot B and Siroky J. 2022. Bicentennial of Gregor Johann Mendel’s birth: Mendel’s work still addresses geneticists in 2022. Frontiers in Plant Science 13: 1–4
https://doi.org/10.3389/fpls.2022.969745
2. Forbes P. 2006. The Gecko’s Foot: how scientists are taking a leaf from nature’s book. London: Harper Perennial. 288 pp.
